


Inside Out

by arcadesintheneighbourhood



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Family, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Love, References to Depression, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadesintheneighbourhood/pseuds/arcadesintheneighbourhood
Summary: By the time they’re 18, Mike and El know each other inside out.A drabble-ish about Mike and Eleven's life together.TW: depression mention/character death/grief mention





	Inside Out

By the time they’re 18, Mike and El know each other inside out. Mike knows El loves eating her favorite restaurant’s Pad See Ew on a Sunday night, but that she only likes to go with Max, the only party member who can handle her spice. And El knows the lines of Mike’s hand like they’re her own, like they share the same skin; she has traced them so many times as she’s laid her head against his shoulder, listening to Mike’s quiet breaths and inhaling the soft scent of his hoodie as they fall asleep together.

When they move to a Boston apartment after Mike goes to college, Mike can tell El wants guinea pigs by the way her eyes widen when they pass a pet store. He knows she loves soft, furry animals, that she wants them to sit in her lap and keep her company when Mike goes to class, but that she hesitates when he asks because she doesn’t want them locked up in a cage just like she had been. So the weekend after the leaves color orange, Mike spends all day Saturday designing and building their guinea pigs a playpen in their living room, and when El wakes up on Sunday morning to see Mike still hunched over a series of blueprints, she knows, as she wraps her arms around his waist and sprinkles tender kisses along his jawline, that it’s not the first time that Mike has stayed up through the night to make someone happy.

There are more serious things about Mike that El knows better than anyone else. She knows of the emotional well that Mike hides himself inside, the well that he is afraid of letting anyone else see when he is swimming under its dark waters. She knows that Mike has trouble falling asleep at night, that he tosses and turns in his sheets, that he sometimes misses alarms for his morning classes because he is so tired of being restless from the night. She knows that the corners of his eyes are sometimes swollen and red because of the dark feelings of worthlessness that overtake him and cause him to weep. And she knows that Mike hates feeling this way, that he doesn’t understand why he feels this way, that he doesn’t want to feel this way, so when she sees him acting a little less Mike and a little more withdrawn, moving his hands less and swallowing his cries before he answers her questions, El just sits next to him and touches his shoulder, asking about DnD or Star Wars or his friends or his mom, knowing his eyes will brighten and the excitement of his own storytelling will sweep him up, helping him to forget the dark waters that engulf him from time to time.

It takes Mike a year after the closing of the gate until he knows the subtleties of El’s facial expressions like she knows the lines on his palms. He knows that the quiver on her lip means that she’s swallowing her fear to be brave and that the wavering in her eyes means someone she loves has hurt her. He counts the number of trembles in cheekbones and learns they mean different things: one tremble for embarrassment, two trembles for disappointment, three trembles for anger. And El knows that Mike is always studying her facial expressions and adjusting his words and stroking her back to make her feel like she’s comfortable, like she’s home. And knowing he is always there for her, that he has taken time to learn her better than he has learned himself, she is.

When Karen passes away after Nancy’s 28th birthday, El doesn’t question why Mike takes over all the cooking even though they used to take turns. El just stands by the kitchen doorway, watching Mike gather ingredients into a bowl with a sweet boyish excitement, knowing that he feels closer to his mom by making the same meals she used to cook for him. When Christmas time comes around, he takes three extra days off work to make trays of chocolate chip cookies and lemon bars and Bundt cakes of every flavor, decorated with sugary green and red sprinkles and tasting as delicious as they look. As they each come out of the oven, their kids devour each plate and exclaim “Dad! This is the best!” to which Mike sighs, “Trust me, they’re not as good as my mom’s” and El knows, as Mike prods at his Bundt cake like an imperfect science experiment, that even though his flavors of caramel and chocolate meld in their mouths just as sweetly as his mom’s had, they never will for Mike. For Mike, his cakes are spoiled from the grief with which he bakes, lacking the love he so desperately misses even after a decade has passed.

El knows that Mike understands, more deeply than he will ever say, the anguish over the loss of a parent. She knows this by glancing at him through ordinary windows of their life when he brushes he teeth, or when he hugs their children, or when he sits on their bed and talks about his day, weaving his fingers through hers. Somehow, as she gazes at him, she can see that the grief that runs through his body is as present as blood that runs through his veins, and she knows he understands the pain better than he lets on when Hopper passes away in a car accident after the Leap Year of 2004. Mike knows that even though months pass after the phone call from the hospital, El’s bone still ache too much to get out of bed, and that she can’t go to her job because it hurts. It hurts for her to see gruff, grumpy seniors that remind her of her dad. He knows that though her blue and brown striped flannel is smelly and stained with snot and tears, she can’t take it off because it’s the only item left that still smells like him, that smells like Hopper. He knows that all she wants to do is lay in bed and grieve and so he lets her do exactly that, bringing her tea with lemon and her favorite magazines and old pictures that the kids have colored of their family to cheer her up. And as he runs his fingers through her curls and tells her how much he loves her, she pulls him towards her into a tight embrace, wondering how he could still be so sweet when she’s been wearing the same shirt for three months. 

With their parents gone, Mike and El are getting older, too. Their children have children of their own who visit Grandpa Mike and Grandma El every Sunday. And as their grandkids jump out of the minivans with chubby cheeks and excited smiles, Mike and El hold hands and realize that though they both have changed, they still know each other inside out. Although the lines of Mike’s hands have changed and wrinkled with age, El knows and loves them all the same, and although Mike knows El can no longer eat Pad See Ew because her tongue has weakened to spice, he knows she loves their new Sunday night tradition: spending it with their grandkids. And as Mike and El share a kiss before their grandkids rush into the house, they think about the hardships they have faced, and faced together, and know that the happiness they are still filled with came only from knowing and loving each other inside out.

**Author's Note:**

> These are more kind of headcanons I came up with about Mike and El strung together in a fic. Let me know what you think!


End file.
